Corporal Sam and Other Stories eBook

’Ah, good-evening, Mr Truman! There has
been some mistake, I hear; but it’s by the greatest
good luck you came to me. Here is your missing
property, eh?’ She smiled and held out the bag.

Butcher Truman stared at it. ‘Send I may
never—­’ he began; and with that his
gaze, travelling past the bag, fell on Doctor Unonius.
‘You?’ he stuttered, clenching his
thick fists. ’You? . . . Oh, by—­,
let me get at ‘im!’

But Mrs Tresize very deftly stepped in front of him
as he came on menacing.

‘If you are not a fool,’ she said sharply,
’you will waste no time, but hurry along and
pay the carriers. They, for their part, won’t
waste any time with neat brandy. In ten minutes
or so they’ll be wanting your blood in a bottle—­and,
if it’s all the same to you, Mr Truman, I’d
rather they didn’t start hunting you through
these premises. What’s more,’ she
added, as he hesitated, ’the riding-officer
was close on your track just now. You owe it
to Doctor Unonius here, that he has overrun it.’

The butcher clutched at his bag, and made as if to
open it.

‘You needn’t trouble,’ Mrs Tresize
assured him sweetly. ’Your money’s
good—­and so will be mine when it comes to
settling, for all that I’m reported “near.”
Good-night!’

‘Good-night!’ growled Butcher Truman,
and lurched forth with his bag. The widow, staring
after him, broke into a laugh.

‘Tryphena,’ she said, ’fetch the
doctor’s horse and harness him quick!
We must get him out of this, good man. Are the
tubs stowed?’

’All of ’em, missus. I counted the
four dozen.’

’Four dozen is forty-eight; and that doctor’—­she
turned to him—­ ‘is not my age, by
a very long way.’

But when Dapple had been harnessed, and the doctor
drove off (after looking at his watch and finding
that it indicated ten minutes to four), Mrs Tresize
lingered at the back door a moment before ordering
Tryphena to shut and bolt it.

‘There was nothing else to do but lie,’
she said to herself, meditatively. ‘But,
all the same, it’s lost him for me.’

CHAPTER VIII.

So indeed it had. Doctor Unonius could not overlook
a falsehood, and from that hour his thoughts never
rested upon the widow Tresize as a desirable woman
to wed.

But he had grave searchings of conscience on the part
he had been made to play. Undoubtedly he had
misled Mr Rattenbury, and—­all question
of public honesty apart—­had perhaps injured
that young officer’s chances of promotion.

The thought of it disturbed his sleep for weeks.
In the end he decided to make a clean breast to Mr
Rattenbury, as between man and man; and encountering
him one afternoon on the Lealand road, drew up old
Dapple and made sign that he wished to speak.